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Vital work that several City Council bills would cripple: NYPD officers demonstrating the stop-and-frisk process. Photo: Warzer Jaff

When I challenged police critics on the City Council to identify their own solutions to disproportionate violence in minority communities, I hoped for some genuine solutions. Instead, they’ve proposed new ways to hamstring police officers responsible for saving lives in those very neighborhoods.

Proactive policing has saved lives in minority communities, driving down murder by 51 percent in the first 10 years of the Bloomberg administration, compared to the decade before. That’s over 5,600 lives saved, with murder down another 19 percent so far this year.

As of Wednesday, the city has had 340 murders this year. If we had Chicago’s murder rate, the total would be 1,224. If we had Philadelphia’s, 1,483; at Baltimore’s rate, 2,338 — and at Detroit’s, 3,635. Instead, New York is on track for a new record low.

Despite this progress, chronic disparities by race remain. Last year 96 percent of all shooting victims and their assailants were black or Hispanic, as were almost 90 percent of murder victims and their killers. This week, the Health Department hailed the “dramatic reductions” in overall gun violence in New York, but noted that “firearms persist as the leading cause of death among young men of color.”

How have our City Council critics reacted to these troubling facts? With bills that would require, among other things, for police to ask a suspected gunman’s permission before searching him. These bills are unworkable at best; at worst, they’d put police officers’ lives at risk.

You can ignore the fact that the NYPD’s focus and resources are properly on high-crime areas, which are for the most part in minority neighborhoods. And the fact that the overwhelming majority of the victims and perpetrators of violent crime are black or Latino. And that proactive police strategies have resulted in New York City becoming the safest big city in America. Ignore all that, and the head-in-the-sand bills introduced in the council might not be so ludicrous.

Intro 799 would require all searches conducted by a police officer to be conducted upon consent, unless based on probable cause, a warrant or arrest. The officer would have to create an audio or written and signed record of that person’s consent, and give him a copy.

Thus, an officer who felt a hard object, possibly a weapon, in the jacket of someone fitting the description of an armed robber would have to get the suspect’s permission to search him. In the unlikely event the suspect gave consent, the officer would have to make an audio or written record and give him a copy.

Intro 800 would amend the city’s racial-profiling law so that police would have to ignore descriptions of suspects provided by someone who refused to identify himself, or if the suspect was spotted in a different part of the city sometime later. For example, a person fitting the description of a rapist wanted in Brooklyn last week couldn’t be stopped in Queens this week.

The bill would also make it easier to sue the city. A plaintiff wouldn’t have to prove actual discrimination, but could sue based on “disparate impact.” That means any man stopped by police could sue, because men are stopped more often than women.

Intro 801 would require NYPD officers to give anyone they have contact with a business card with information on how to file a complaint against the police. Officers already have to provide name, rank, shield number and command upon request. This new requirement is in addition to the information card which may already be provided to individuals who are stopped.

Intro 881 would create an inspector general to investigate a Police Department that’s already subject to investigations by five independently-elected district attorneys, two US attorneys, the state attorney general, the Mayor’s Commission on Police Corruption and the Civilian Complaint Review Board. These entities, as well as the Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, already actively address instances where officers may exceed their authority or otherwise commit acts of misconduct.

All these proposals come from City Council members who’ve yet to offer concrete measures on how to reduce violence where it happens most. They’re vocal in criticism of the NYPD, but silent about the body count in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. They criticize the police for focusing resources and enforcement in the communities that most need them.

By contrast, the NYPD, as the nation’s most racially and ethnically diverse police department, actively engages the problem. We save lives. Our officers work day and night, often at great peril, to improve the safety of those residing in the city’s highest crime precincts. Police officers must not be prevented from carrying out their core law-enforcement mission just because their critics cry bias.